Tag Archives: gay marriage

political news, religious news, State news

Cruz to county clerks: Sure, go ahead, break the law

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is running hard for president of the United States and he’s now taking every opportunity to have his voice heard.

Let’s take the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that legalizes gay marriage across the nation.

What’s the junior Republican Texas senator’s take on it: It ought to be OK for county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples if it violates their religious beliefs.

Let’s hold on here, young man.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/27/cruz-clerks-should-be-able-opt-out-gay-marriage-li/

County clerks in Texas take an oath to uphold the law. It doesn’t offer any qualifiers, that they can opt out of fulfilling that oath if their religious faith stands in the way.

Texas county clerks do have an option if they simply cannot authorize a marriage license to a gay couple. They can resign their public office. Indeed, when New Mexico legalized gay marriage this past year, the Roosevelt County clerk did exactly that; she quit rather than do something with which her religious faith did not believe.

“Ours is a country that was built by men and women fleeing religious oppression,” Cruz said in an interview with The Texas Tribune, “and you look at the foundation of this country — it was to seek out a new land where anyone of us could worship the Lord God Almighty with all of our hearts, minds and souls, without government getting in the way.”

Without government getting in the way? My goodness, senator. We all are able to do all those things. We can go to church, to synagogue, to the mosque — anywhere we wish — and pray to whichever deity in which we believe. The Supreme Court decision handed down this week say not a single word about any of that.

It merely affirms that the 14th Amendment guarantees all U.S. citizens the right to “equal protection” under the law. Thus, they are entitled to marry whomever they wish.

I have no clue what the state’s county clerks are going to do, which of them will adhere to the law and which of them will declare that they just cannot in good conscience issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Those who refuse will be breaking the law they took an oath to uphold.

It’s interesting to me that Sen. Cruz keeps tossing the word “lawless” around to describe the Supreme Court, the Obama administration — and virtually anyone who disagrees with his world view.

Yet, he’s seeking a way for county clerks to evade the law. That’s my definition of “lawlessness.”

 

legal news

Justices vent their anger, show their fangs

What? Do you mean to say that the U.S. Supreme Court justices are human beings, with actual tempers?

I guess so, if the story attached to this post is any indicator.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/supreme-court-justices-antonin-scalia-samuel-alito-119486.html?ml=po

The two huge rulings this week — affirming the Affordable Care Act and legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states — reportedly has revealed a growing schism between the two wings of the court.

Conservative justices don’t like the liberal tilt the court showed in the two rulings.

And at least one of them, Justice Antonin Scalia, said as much in his dissenting opinions.

Scalia and fellow Justice Samuel Alito appear to be angriest at Justice Anthony Kennedy, who joined the liberal justices on both rulings. Kennedy was picked for the court by a conservative president, Ronald Reagan, as was Scalia; Alito was picked by President George W. Bush.

I happen to believe that Scalia and Alito need to settle down. It seems a stretch for me to believe that a high court headed by yet another Bush selection, Chief Justice John Roberts, is going to become a bastion of liberal constitutional interpretation.

OK, so the liberals won two gigantic victories. Obamacare stands and gay marriage is now legal.

There will be plenty of other fights along the way.

What’s more, the fact that Scalia wrote such scathing dissents shouldn’t surprise anyone. He’s known for using colorful language and is fearless in stating his case.

As for the court’s fifth conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, well … he’s always silent during oral arguments before the court. The day Justice Thomas erupts in a fit of rage might be cause for concern.

legal news

The court’s logic on gay marriage makes sense

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I’ve never claimed to be — nor will I ever make such a claim to be — the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

At times I can be slow on the uptake. I occasionally lack intuition.

But the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage makes crystal clear sense to me. It’s about the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. That is it — as near as I can tell.

Thus, the hysteria being expressed by Texas Republican leaders — along with other GOP honchos across this great country — is boggling my mind.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/26/cruz-perry-react-gay-marriage-ruling/

Of all the things I’ve heard from the opponents of the ruling, the most hysterical response belongs — and this is zero surprise to many of us — Sen. Ted Cruz, one of a thundering herd of candidates running for the GOP nomination in 2016.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the first candidate for the GOP nomination for president, said the gay marriage ruling puts religious liberty ‘front and center in the target of the federal government.’ He called it the ‘very definition of lawlessness. It is naked and unadulterated judicial activism.'”

Sheesh. Judicial activism? I wonder how he ranks the Citizens United ruling of 2010, which declared that corporations and rich fat cats could give unlimited amounts of campaign money, tilting the political playing field to the distinct advantage of those with the most money. Oh, but that’s another story.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says this, in part: “… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

You know what that means to me? It means that states cannot deny someone the ability to marry whomever they love. It means to me that the U.S. Constitution, the one that all politicians swear to “protect and defend” is the law of the land. It means that all citizens shall not be denied “equal protection of the laws.”

Can it be any clearer than that?

The Supreme Court upheld the U.S. Constitution in a tightly worded majority opinion. It said that states cannot bar people from marrying someone if that someone happens to be of the same gender.

Judicial activism?

If I can understand what the court said and meant, why can’t The Cruz Missile? He’s the one with the Harvard law degree.

legal news

Kennedy channels Blackmun and makes history

It’s always risky to put too fine a point on some historical events, but today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states tells me that the court has issued a ruling that is going to change the nation’s landscape … forever.

We can give credit — although some will assess blame — on one justice. That would be Anthony Kennedy, a normally conservative justice who sided with the liberals on the court and wrote the 5-4 majority opinion legalizing gay marriage.

Game, set and match? Not by a long shot.

Kennedy’s role, though, does have an interesting parallel with another justice from another time — with whom he served for five years on the same Supreme Court.

Harry Blackmun was selected to the court in 1971 by a conservative president, Richard Nixon; Kennedy joined the court in 1988 when another conservative president, Ronald Reagan, nominated him.

Blackmun eventually would veer far from where President Nixon thought he’d travel as he served on the highest court in the land. Blackmun became one of the court’s more liberal members.

In January 1973, he authored a landmark ruling that made abortion legal in the United States. Roe v. Wade was a case out of Texas in which the court overturned a Texas law that made getting an abortion a felony offense. Blackmun’s opinion stated that women essentially were entitled to control their own reproductive capacity. The 7-2 ruling set the stage for a debate that hasn’t let up over the course of the past 42 years, but it was a huge decision.

The man on the hot seat now is Kennedy, who remains a conservative jurist. But on this issue, gay marriage, he has decided — along with the court’s liberal wing — that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, with its equal protection clause, trumps states’ reluctance to allow gay couples to marry.

I doubt strongly we’re going to see Justice Kennedy become a flaming liberal in the wake of this ruling. He just happens to be right — and courageous — in making this decision.

Just as Roe v. Wade changed the landscape in early 1973, today’s ruling on gay marriage sets the stage for another gigantic sea change across the nation.

I wish I was a fly on Justice Kennedy’s wall when he talked this over with his court colleagues and his staff as he pondered how he would write this Earth-shattering opinion. Something tells me he heard the late Justice Blackmun’s voice.

 

legal news

14th Amendment means what it says

Well, it’s been an Earth-shaking couple of days at the Supreme Court of the United States, don’t you think?

First, the court upholds the Affordable Care Act, guaranteeing health insurance for all Americans.

Then today comes a ruling that makes gay marriage legal in every state in the Union.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/246249-scalia-gay-marriage-decision-shows-americas-ruler-is-supreme

Today’s ruling is going to cause considerable apoplexy among political conservatives, some of whom now are saying the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the dissenters in today’s ruling, said the nation is now being governed by a majority of justices.

Let’s hold on here.

The ruling tosses out statewide bans on gay marriage on the basis of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the document we use to establish a governing framework for the entire nation.

States’ rights? I believe the federal Constitution trumps those rights. The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment means what it says, that all citizens are guaranteed the right to “equal protection under the law,” which means that if gay citizens want to marry someone of the same gender, they are entitled under the law to do exactly that.

Is the battle over? Not even close.

It’s going to shift to the issue of religious liberty, where individuals will argue that their faith and their religious opposition to same-sex marriage also is guaranteed under the First Amendment. Some Republican candidates for president are calling for a constitutional amendment to make same-sex marriage illegal; good luck with that, as the 14th Amendment stands as the protector of all Americans’ rights to equal treatment under the law.

The court has done what it had to do. It has affirmed what the U.S. Constitution declares in guaranteeing every American the right to marry who they love — no matter what.

 

legal news

Next up for Supremes? Gay marriage

Given that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, with two conservative justices joining the liberals to form a majority coalition, it is fair to speculate about the gay marriage ruling that’s coming up.

My trick knee is throbbing and it’s telling me the court is going to declare that gay couples can legally be married.

What’s more, if conservatives think they’re angry now at Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling in favor of the ACA, wait to see the reaction if he decides that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause applies to gay couples.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/18/cruz-courts-evangelical-voters/

Republicans, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, say that religious liberty is under attack. Cruz, who’s running for the GOP presidential nomination, told the Faith and Freedom Coalition: “I would encourage everyone here to be lifting up in prayer the court that they not engage in an act of naked and lawless judicial activism, tearing down the marriage laws adopted pursuant to the Constitution.”

There he goes again, using that word “lawless.”

The case under consideration deals with whether a gay couple can be married legally in one state and have it recognized in another. Federal judges have overturned state bans on gay marriage, declaring that such bans violate the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens. Gay people are citizens, too.

The court surprised a lot of Americans — including me — by upholding the ACA.

I’m sensing a less-surprising outcome on the gay marriage issue.

The reaction, though, could be ferocious.

local news, State news

Gay marriage may become campaign issue

Let’s play this out a few moves.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide whether states can ban same-sex marriage. R.G. Ratcliffe, writing for Texas Monthly, thinks the court is likely to rule that statewide bans violate the U.S. Constitution.

So, what happens when county clerks are forced to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Texas?

Do they follow the law? Or do they resign, as was the case over in Roosevelt County, N.M., when that state legalized same-sex marriages.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/social-conservatives-want-special-session-gay-marriage

Suppose, then, that Randall County Clerk Renee Calhoun and Potter County Clerk Julie Smith decide to follow the law. Will they face a stout challenge — likely within the Republican Party, to which they both belong?

Does the gay marriage issue become a campaign wedge issue here in the Texas Panhandle’s two largest counties?

Texas voters some years ago approved a Texas constitutional amendment that reiterated what was already on the books. The state has a statute that declares that marriage must involve a man and a woman. But, by golly, the Legislature referred the amendment to the voters to ensure that they said “Hell yes!” to a ban on same-sex marriage.

I’m betting that Ratcliffe is correct, that the Supreme Court is going to make all of this moot when it rules that the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment cannot be violated.

I also am willing to bet that county clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples are going to face serious challenges in their next campaign for re-election.

Who would think a campaign for county clerk could be so, um, tumultuous?

 

 

national news, political news

Sexuality is no 'lifestyle choice'

1 Comment

Mike Huckabee is entitled to believe what he believes about homosexuality.

I just happen to think he’s mistaken when he compares a person’s sexual orientation to drinking alcohol or cursing in public.

http://nypost.com/2015/02/01/huckabee-says-gay-marriage-is-just-like-alcohol-or-profanity/

That’s his latest take on an issue that is likely to be a key driver in the upcoming 2016 Republican presidential nomination campaign.

Huckabee is a former Baptist preacher and a one-time Arkansas governor. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” that while he opposes gay marriage he wants to be tolerant of those who choose to marry someone of the same gender. As the New York Post reported: “I accept a lot of people as friends maybe whose lifestyle I don’t necessarily adhere to, agree with or practice. Doesn’t mean that I can’t have a good relationship with anyone or lead them or govern them.”

“We’re so sensitive to make sure we don’t offend certain religions, but then we act like Christians can’t have the convictions that they have had for over 2,000 years,” he said.

I get that, too. I also am a practicing Christian, but I happen to have a different view of the issue than the former governor.

The notion that many folks have that someone’s sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice simply defies logic, as explained to me over many years by my own gay friends. To a person, whenever the subject comes up — and I don’t bring it up myself, ever — about their orientation, they say essentially the same thing: “Why would I choose to be scorned, ridiculed and vilified?”

I haven’t found the answer to that one.

national news, political news, State news

Gay marriage on its way … to Texas?

Do you ever feel as though you’re swimming against a tide that keeps getting stronger while it sucks the energy out of your efforts to fight it?

That’s how I’m feeling with this gay marriage issue.

I’m still grappling with the notion that it’s all right for people of the same sex to marry each other. I’m a traditionalist and my own values make it hard for me to embrace the idea of same-sex marriage as being the same as the marriage I have enjoyed for the past 43-plus years.

OK, I’ve laid down that marker.

I also understand what the law says, what’s in the U.S. Constitution and how all Americans are guaranteed equal protection under the law. Thus, it appears that states’ bans on gay marriage appear doomed.

That notion I will accept.

Florida has just begun allowing same-sex couples to marry. Federal judges — those damn “unelected judges,” in the eyes of conservatives — keep overturning state bans on same-sex marriage. A federal judge in Texas has ruled that our state’s ban — written into the Texas Constitution — violates the federal Constitution’s equal protection clause stated in the 14th Amendment. It grants full rights of citizenship to anyone born in the United States with zero regard to that people’s sexual orientation.

All of this makes perfect sense to me. If the states are governed by a federal framework — the Constitution — then the states are obligated to obey the rules set down within that framework.

Does any of this mean that all Americans must embrace the idea of same-sex partners getting married? Honestly, no.

All it means to me is that the law is the law and that states cannot impose their own laws that supersede the Constitution of the United States of America.

That includes bans on same-sex marriage.

I can feel that tide of political and cultural change getting stronger all the time.

 

legal news, national news, political news, State news

One more reason to detest Ted Cruz

That settles it: Ted Cruz is my least favorite of the 100 men and women who serve in the U.S. Senate.

Why the additional scorn? Well, the freshman Republican from Texas said this about the Supreme Court’s decision to refuse to review state laws banning same-sex marriage:

“This is judicial activism at its worst.”

OK, he said some other stuff too in criticizing the high court. He accused the justices of “abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/ted-cruz-supreme-court-gay-marriage-111655.html?hp=l7

Judicial activism, eh?

I think I can come up with at least one greater example of judicial activism perpetrated on this nation by the Roberts Court, one of the more so-called “conservative” courts in the nation’s history. Let’s try the Citizens United case.

Remember that one, Ted? That’s the case that determined that corporations are people, too — to borrow Mitt Romney’s (in)famous phrase during the 2012 presidential campaign. The court decided to let corporations spend all the money they wanted on political campaigns, just like regular folks. It determined that multi-zillion-dollar business interests have as much say in determining who gets elected as poor schleps like me who might want to write a $20 check to the candidate of my choice.

So, if you’re a candidate who then gets elected, who are you going to listen to more intently: the mega corporation or the individual contributor?

That, Sen. Cruz, is how I would define judicial activism.

This label often is used by conservatives to rip apart liberal judicial rulings. These critics, such as Cruz, ignore at their peril their own brand of judicial activism.

The Roberts Court showed it can be as activist as, say, the Warren Court was in the 1950s.

Cruz surely knows this.

A dear friend of mine who visited my wife and me this past weekend served in government and journalism for more than 40 years. He said of Cruz, who he described as “smart as they come”:

“Intelligence is inherited. Wisdom must be earned.”